María Álvarez is the co-founder, along with Isaac Martínez, of the publisher Novo, the very first publishing house dedicated to gastronomy in Mexico. Maria and Isaac started Novo in 2023 because they saw a lack in the types of books being published about Mexican cuisine, both in Mexico and abroad. The wanted to be a publisher that is more collaborative with other disciplines, more like a milpa. Rather than just a monoculture of corn, they wanted a multicropped garden of designers, photographers and other professionals to help support the vision of the author. In this interview she explains how she moved from the world of art publishing into culinary publishing and is helping shape a community around these niche books about food in Mexico, as well as through their podcast series, Radio Milpa.
Novo now has published two books. The first is Cocina de Oaxaca, by Alejandro Ruiz, published last year. Ruiz is the chef of Casa Oaxaca, who is one of the godfathers of modern Oaxacan cooking and has helped teach in a generation of cooks at his restaurant Casa Oaxaca. They also just released Estado de Hongos, a book about mushrooms in central Mexico by the Mexican Japanese forager by Nanae Watabe, She supplies mushrooms to lots of the best restaurants in the DF and is at the intersection of all things mushrooms in Mexico and the book reflects that. This October, they will be publishing La República Democrática del Cerdo, by Pedro Reyes, who you might know from the Taco Chronicles on Netflix. You can order them online or find them in bookstores in Mexico, as well as buy some of the books on Amazon in the U.S. or at incredible culinary bookstores like Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York and Now Serving in Los Angeles.
This world of publishing culinary books in Latin America is really beginning to open up and I couldn’t be happier. I think a healthy publishing environment is one where a lot of different voices and aesthetics are being developed and not just that of a few large international publishers. In the interview we discuss how important the very language being used in a culinary book can be.
Episode #95: María Álvarez